Today I’m going to explain what I believe today’s real estate professionals should be using for making “wow” presentations at listings appointments. In times where I’ve managed sales people, many of them would say to me, “I’m no good at listing appointments, and I don’t know what my problem is. Would you accompany me on an appointment?” So I accompanied realtors literally thousands of times on listing appointments. On the second listing appointment with them I’d help them prepare the presentation and I’d ask to do the whole presentation myself. But for the first listing appointment I would tell them to bring what they’d normally bring to an appointment and present as they normally would. I’d be that fly on the wall and just watch what they’d do and say. I wouldn’t get involved in any way, even if I saw ways of helping them. I just watched what they did and observed how they handled various situations. I noticed most real estate sales people did nearly identical presentations. Of course, they all brought copies of sold comparables and current comparable listings. They always brought copies of various places they advertised their listings in such as magazines and newspapers. They always brought copies of feature sheets. Some brought personal brochures. Sometimes they had copies of listings they’d sold in the immediate area. This is what I saw again and again and again. Years ago, when I got into the business, it was all about your ability to persuasively talk your way into a listing. It was about how well you could influence the seller through your passion and the way you communicated with them.
Today is very, very different. Regardless of when you started in real estate, we all know today’s customer is very different from the customer of 5-10 years ago. One of the key reasons is the internet. Research is one of the most important things most consumers do with the internet, and most people enjoy doing it. Because consumers are so much more educated than ever, sellers are not impressed when you just use only the tools of yesteryear. So you need to ask yourself this question again: “What is my listing package supposed to do for the seller?” Let’s say I was the seller, and you were sitting across the table from me, hoping to list my home. You present your usual information. You’re trying to impress me with it, gain my confidence and trust, and prove you’re better than everybody else. But what’s the one thing I, the seller, am supposed to deduce from that information? It’s simply this: you justify your commission to the seller. Ladies and gentlemen, what you say, what you demonstrate, what you show in your listing presentation has to make the seller think, “Wow! Now I see why this is worth $50,000”. This is a really, really important point. When I got into the business many years ago, the typical commission was $1200. And that was the total commission, not even our portion! My first commission was $300! Today many people think “Money wasn’t worth the same then as it is now”. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, $50000 is a lot of money. That’s more than many people make in an entire year! I want you to very clearly understand what a huge error taking the commission amount for granted is. It’s a big problem with real estate professionals. Many of you will find when you’ve been in the business for a while, even just a couple of years, you no longer think in terms of dollars and cents anymore. You just think “oh, it’s just a deal” or “doing this will only cost me half a deal”. Thinking this way makes you lose all perspective on the value of money very often. When you lose that, you’ll lose sight of justifying that all important question; in the seller’s mind: is this real estate professional worth the commission? So I want sales people to understand this: when you sit across the table at a listing presentation, your presentation and the explanation of what you will do to get this property sold MUST justify the commission they’re spending on you. I believe in using experts. I believe you should use experts at everything you do. I know what I’m not good at, and if I want the job done right for such things, I use an expert. An expert naturally demonstrates their expertise, proving they can do the job better than the seller and competitors, and hence justifying the commission they’re asking for. In recent times where it was a sellers’ market, the seller thinks “You listed my house on Saturday, you showed it on Sunday, the offer came in on Tuesday, and it sold on Wednesday. You did a total of 4 days work and you want me to spend $50,000?” That’s how they think about it. So your goal today: having a listing presentation using the latest tools that “wows” the seller, not just using what the tools real estate sales people used in the 70’s and 80’s. If you’re still relying on that, you’re not on top of what’s happening today, and you’re losing listings. You need to be doing what’s happening today. My 2 day RECO approved course “The Advanced Listing In a High Tech World” gives you the latest tools for bringing your listing presentations up to date and closing more listings. In my next article I’ll discuss the 4 essential ingredients of any realtor’s listing presentation package.
